Networked computer systems play important roles in the operation of many businesses and organizations. The performance of a computer system providing services to a business and/or customers of a business may be integral to the successful operation of the business. A computer system refers generally to any collection of one or more devices interconnected to perform a desired function, provide one or more services, and/or to carry out various operations of an organization, such as a business corporation, etc.
In some computer systems, the operation and maintenance of the system is delegated to one or more administrators (or operators) that make up the system's information technology (IT) organization. When a computer system is managed by an IT organization, the computer system may be referred to as an IT environment. The IT organization may set-up a computer system to provide end users with various application or transactional services, access to data, network access, etc., and establish the environment, security and permissions landscape and other capabilities of the computer system. This model allows dedicated personnel to customize the system, centralize application installation, establish access permissions, and generally handle the operation of the enterprise in a way that is largely transparent to the end user. The day-to-day maintenance and servicing of the system as well as the contributing personnel are referred to as IT operations (or “operations” for short).
As computer systems become more complex and as organizations continue to rely more on the resources and services provided by their respective computer systems, maintaining the system and ensuring that services provided by the system are available becomes increasingly important, more complex, and more difficult to achieve.
In particular, managing the capacity of a large computer system may present challenges to IT organizations. As used herein, the capacity of a computer system refers to the quantity of resources available to the system for carrying out the tasks of the computer system. These resources may be any type of resources, such as, for example, hardware resources, software resources, and/or human resources. Poor capacity management may result in failure of the computer system. For example, a computer system that hosts an e-commerce web site selling toys may become particularly busy during certain times of the year (e.g., during the holiday season). Failure to increase the capacity of the computer system to meet the increased demand during these times of the year may result in the web site overloading and the computer system crashing. Conversely, overestimating the magnitude of the increase in demand may result in purchasing too much additional capacity, thereby wasting money and underutilizing resources.
In addition, operations often handle capacity management problems as they arise, leading to a patchwork of solutions that become difficult to understand and maintain. In general, different IT organizations approach similar capacity management challenges very differently, without any cohesive guidelines regarding how to how to plan, justify, and manage appropriate levels of resources needed to perform the tasks of the computer system.